The rapidly growing market for portable electronics devices, e.g. cellular phones, laptop computers, and wearable devices is an integral facet of modern life. The multitude of portable devices represents one of the largest potential market opportunities for next generation biological sensor packaging. These devices have unique attributes that have significant impacts on manufacturing integration, in that they must be generally small, lightweight, and rich in functionality and they must be produced in high volumes at relatively low cost.
As an extension of the semiconductor industry, the biological sensor industry, including heart rate monitors and peripheral oxygen sensors, for example, has witnessed ever-increasing commercial competitive pressures, along with growing consumer expectations and the diminishing opportunities for meaningful product differentiation in the marketplace.
Packaging size and layout are at the very core of these next generation electronics insertion strategies outlined in road maps for development of next generation products. Competitive next generation products should increase signal to noise ratio, decrease costs, and operate with increased sensor performance. Importantly, for some industry segments including wearable rings, achieving smaller form factors and reducing power requirements is critical.
There have been many approaches to addressing the advanced packaging requirements of microprocessors and optical sensors with successive generations of semiconductors. Many industry road maps have identified significant gaps between the current sensor capability and the available supporting electronic packaging technologies. The limitations and issues with current technologies include large die size, higher costs, and compromised optical properties.
As these packaging systems evolve to incorporate more components with varied environmental needs, the pressure to push the technological envelope becomes increasingly challenging. More significantly, with the ever-increasing complexity, the potential risk of error increases greatly during manufacture.
In view of the ever-increasing commercial competitive pressures, along with growing consumer expectations and the diminishing opportunities for meaningful product differentiation in the marketplace, it is critical that answers be found for these problems. Additionally, the need to reduce costs, reduce production time, improve efficiencies and performance, and meet competitive pressures, adds an even greater urgency to the critical necessity for finding answers to these problems.
Thus, a need remains for smaller footprints, lower costs, and improved optical properties. Solutions to these problems have been long sought but prior developments have not taught or suggested any solutions and, thus, solutions to these problems have long eluded those skilled in the art.